This bill (H.R. 3) would cut nearly $15 billion from previously approved, unspent funding, including $7 billion from the Children’s Health Insurance Program and $4.3 billion from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program.
The Senate rejected a motion to discharge H.R. 3 from the Senate Budget Committee (so that it could be considered by the full Senate) on June 20, 2018 by a vote of 48 to 50 (Roll Call 134). We have assigned pluses to the yeas not only because the spending falls outside the scope of constitutionally authorized federal powers, but also because the federal government needs to start reining in ballooning federal spending (and debt) somewhere in order to avert fiscal disaster. The cuts in this bill comprise only a fraction of one percent of total federal spending, and according to the Congressional Budget Office, most of the unspent funding targeted by the bill would not be spent anyway. Yet modest cuts are better than none at all.
